A man who laundered millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin (BTC) has been sentenced to three years in prison after assisting authorities with another high-profile crypto laundering case. According to a new report by Bloomberg, Larry Harmon – who pleaded guilty to running a crypto mixing service on the dark web in 2021 – has […]
The post BTC Launderer Given ‘Lenient’ Three-Year Prison Sentence for Assisting With Bitcoin Fog Case: Report appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
Larry Harmon laundered 350,000 BTC, but he was treated leniently for his help in jailing Roman Sterlingov.
Larry Harmon, who was arrested in 2020 for helping criminals launder money through the Helix cryptocurrency mixer, has been sentenced to three years in prison. The sentence was a show of leniency due to his assistance in the Bitcoin Fog mixer case, District of Columbia District Court Judge Beryl Howell said.
Harmon faced a sentence of up to 20 years for the charges against him. The government had recommended a sentence of 75 months on Nov. 11. Harmon was fined $60 million by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in 2020.
Harmon helped prosecutors in the case against Bitcoin Fog operator Roman Sterlingov, who was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison on Nov. 8. Harmon expressed remorse at his sentencing. He had also shut down Helix two years before his arrest, the judge noted while passing sentence on him. “He turned himself around before he was arrested in this case,” she said.
A landmark sentencing has closed the chapter on Bitcoin Fog, the longest-running bitcoin mixing service on the darknet, with its operator facing over a decade in prison. The Fall of Bitcoin Fog: DOJ’s Pursuit Unmasks a Decade-Long Darknet Operation The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday that Roman Sterlingov has been sentenced to prison […]
The founder of the longest-running crypto mixer on the darknet has just been ordered to serve 12 years and six months in prison. In a statement, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) says Roman Sterlingov was sentenced for operating the cryptocurrency mixer Bitcoin Fog, which laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in digital assets for […]
The post Founder of Crypto Mixer Bitcoin Fog Sentenced to Over 12 Years in Prison on Money Laundering Charges appeared first on The Daily Hodl.
In March, a jury convicted Bitcoin Fog founder Roman Sterlingov of four counts related to money laundering through the operations of the crypto mixing service.
Lawyers representing Roman Sterlingov, the founder of cryptocurrency mixer Bitcoin Fog, have argued against a “lengthy” sentence following his conviction on money laundering charges.
In an Aug. 15 filing in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Sterlingov’s legal team did not seem to make a specific sentencing recommendation in response to prosecutors’ petition he should serve between 20 and 30 years in prison. Lawyers for the Bitcoin Fog founder claimed that the government’s recommendations were “unwarranted” based on sentencing in comparable cases.
In March, a jury convicted Sterlingov of money laundering, conspiracy to money launder, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and money transmission without a license in DC. Prosecutors alleged he operated the crypto mixer from 2011 to 2021, acting as a money laundering service for “criminals seeking to hide their illicit proceeds from law enforcement.”
A Swedish-Russian citizen has been charged with operating a multi-million Bitcoin laundering service after authorities traced his crypto transactions from 2011.
U.S. authorities have arrested the alleged mastermind behind a multi-million darknet-based BTC mixing service, Bitcoin Fog, after analyzing 10 years of blockchain data.
Authorities have issued a chilling warning to other users of illegal blockchain services: Anything you do today may come back to haunt you as “this activity is on this ledger forever” and ever-more sophisticated analytics technology can track down crimes committed years earlier.
For approximately a decade, Bitcoin Fog has enabled users to conceal the origin and destination of its users’ crypto assets. However, the Internal Revenue Service is charging Russian-Swedish citizen, Roman Sterlingov, with laundering more than 1.2 million Bitcoin worth $336 million while serving as the website’s administrator.
Sterlingov was arrested on April 27 in Los Angeles, with the IRS estimating he received commissions of between 2% and 2.5% for mixing services at the time of each transaction — worth roughly $8 million then but exponentially more today.
Authorities estimate at least 23% of the Bitcoin that flowed through the mixing service was transferred to darknet-based narcotics marketplaces such as Silk Road.
Sterlingov’s arrest was the product of authorities fastidiously unpicking the web of BTC transactions associated with the mixer service dating back to 2011, using the Bitcoin blockchain to identify the site’s operator.
Sterlingov founded the website in late 2011 under a Japanese pseudonym meaning “Happy New Year, '' spruiking Bitcoin Fog as eliminating any chance of authorities “finding your payments and making it impossible to prove any connection between a deposit and a withdraw inside our service."
In 2019, undercover IRS agents engaged Sterlingov through the platform, claiming they wished to launder the profits from ecstasy sales. The transactions were processed without a reply.
Law enforcement was able to identify that Sterlingov had paid for Bitcoin Fog’s server hosting expenses using the now-defunct digital currency Liberty Reserve, allowing them to trace when he bought the Liberty Reserve using Bitcoin transferred from the collapsed pioneer crypto exchange, Mt Gox.
From there, the IRS was able to identify the home address and phone number that Sterlingov had registered to his account, and eventually a Google Drive account containing instructions outlining the steps he took to purchase his Liberty Reserve coins.
“This is yet another example of how investigators with the right tools can leverage the transparency of cryptocurrency to follow the flow of illicit funds,” said Jonathan Levin, co-founder of blockchain forensics firm, Chainalysis.
Computer scientist, Sarah Meiklejohn, stated:
“With blockchain analytics, the thing we say over and over is that all this activity is on this ledger forever, and if you did something bad 10 years ago you can be caught and arrested for it today.”
Despite Sterlingov’s detention Bitcoin Fog remains online, although it is unclear who is operating the site.
U.S. law enforcement arrested the alleged operator of Bitcoin Fog, Roman Sterlingov in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Documents show Sterlingov is accused of laundering over 1.2 million bitcoin via the Bitcoin Fog mixer, a tool that allows users to mix transactions together. According to federal investigators, Sterlingov ran the operation for ten years and processed […]